L.G.C. |Reviews| — Layers of Fear

Take control of a painter whose sole purpose is to finish his Magnum …of wine. Layers of Fear faces the CHAIRQUISITION!

Game: Layers of Fear
Webzone:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/391720/
Devel: Bloober Team (Published by AssPyre)
Engine: Unity
Price: 19.99 / CDN 21.99

Wazzat: Layers of Fear is a first-person psychedelic horror game with a heavy focus on story and exploration. Players take control of a painter whose sole purpose is to finish his Magnum Opus.

Mandatory US Disclosure: They made with the keys


CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR
– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Performance is better than the EA version.
  • That said the studio where your savegames start from sets the performance pace.
  • In there you can go from 112 FERPS to 12 in less than a quarter turn.
  • Get use to that shite since it never stops *booga booga*

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Had to bust out the PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=60 to get sound working
  • Chugs at 4K
  • Struggles to maintain above 30@1080
  • You can predict the room change if there is a window, because the game renders the entire room at once

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It did that stupid Unity thing of trying to fullscreen into both monitors and fail, during early access.
  • They fixed it for the final version, so that’s good.
  • The scariest thing about this game, besides all the wasted liquor, is how low the FerPS will dip when you’re looking at a static corner of an otherwise mundane room.
  • That should set the tone for the rest of my bits in this review.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It looks fantastic for a Unity title.
  • Unfortunately the imaginary light sources make everything shimmer unnaturally.
  • The textures and models are well done but hella overused.
  • I straight up collect pipes and don’t own that many holders… containing the same, damn, pipes.
  • This game is all about the audio. Atmosphere, it has it. Squeaks, groans, and creaks all sound legit.
  • It does a proper job of emulating something that Frictional Games does 1000X better.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Everything looks good until you look at a mirror.
  • The voice acting is competently done.   A rare sight…er…sound in a unity game
  • The ooky spoopy atmosphere is there.   For the most part the game draws your attention to where it should be in order to set up the jump scare
  • The baby dolls were hilarious though
  • Someone managed to discover the secret to unity games not looking like crap.   Not using any of the stock assets.

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Visually and audibly, this game nailed it!
  • It’s too bad that doesn’t translate into the mechanics. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
  • The music has taken some heavy inspiration from Silent Hill.
    • Ripping off Akira Yamaoka is probably the best thing you can do to your horror game’s soundtrack!
  • It’s a very good looking Unity game. This is what Unity games might actually look like if people didn’t just buy shitty assets piecemeal, held them together like cardboard and spit, and put it up on Steam as though it were a game.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Here’s the thing, Brad. If you have the balls to show me a Frictional Games hand I best be able to FK around with ALLTHETHINGS!
  • At least Gone Home got that right.
  • Outside of that everything works and it should since you are effectively playing a 3D hidden object game.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • You get your amnesia hand of clicking and dragging, and that’s about it
  • It gets dinged a chair though because it’s not 100% reliable.   Sometimes you have to find the magic angle to make things work

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • They’ve streamlined the controls to just the basics.
  • Movement, interaction and canceling out of an interaction.
  • There’s rebindable controls and contrary to most other Unity games, the mouse sensitivity is actually sane.
  • I wouldn’t call what your character does when you hold the shift key as sprinting.
  • Hell, calling it a brisk pace would be literal hyperbole. All it seems to do is lower the mouse sensitivity.
  • But that’s just me picking at the nits.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


FUN?

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • Again, this is a 3D hidden object game with a few jump scares mixed /w the most generic story …in the world.
  • It’s on rails.
  • and I’m sooooooooooooooooooooo sick of opening doors and one of th…. you know what? Let’s cut to the chase.
  • I’m not going to spoil the ending but I’m going to spoil a plot device so skip ahead until the Canadian shows up if you want to preserve your innocence.
  • ….nothing can hurt/kill you.
  • After you realize that you’re invulnerable it’s just a poorly done find object X and use it to interact /w object Y simulator.
  • If you want to drop $19.99 on a semi-interactive story have at.

J-CHAIR

  • Very much on rails.
  • Pedro will go into this further, but it’s walk into rooms and key finder simulator
  • Motherfucker, I can’t even find my keys in real life and you expect me to play a game about it
  • The atmosphere is sorta kinda there, but the payoffs aren’t really that great.   Jump scares are pretty well telegraphed
    • It’s sorta spoopy when I’m high, but that’s because I’m already paranoid from the drugs
    • Also, how come all the baby heads are white?
  • I struggle to maintain my interest
  • It’s kind of like the stanley parable.   Only without the humour, or the choices, or anything that made that game enjoyable

P-CHAIR

  • Find whatever the developer coded as a key to use on whatever the developer coded as a door, the game.
  • It seems to suffer from many of the problems that the current generation of horror games seem to.
    • The over use of a given trope without rhyme or reason.
    • Zero branching or decision making
    • Random, supposedly scary events that just had me laughing my ass off.
    • Doesn’t have a flashlight so I can’t really fault it for being shitty on that regard.
  • Of all the Silent Hill games it could rip off, it went for The Room.
  • Silent Hill 4: The Room was riddled with missteps and good ideas done poorly.
  • I like its premise, just like the premise in Layers of Fear is very appealing.
  • Did you kill your wife? Did she just die from her affliction? Where’s your kid?
  • These are all questions I would have loved to see answered organically.
    • Storytelling through gameplay.
  • No, you get all the plot dumps by picking notes or pictures or staring at a goddamn painting while standing still and not being able to do a damn thing about it.
  • Cue the watching paint dry-jokes!
    • Seriously…
    • Did NO ONE on the development team ever stop to consider if their HORROR game could be used as the butt of a “… than watching paint dry” joke.
    • But I’m getting side tracked.
  • The atmosphere works… right up until the music starts looping for the 3rd time in a row because you’re taking too long to figure out what the developer was thinking in any giving puzzle.
    • That and when the FerPS take a dive because there’s about to be a more complex thing happening. That’s an immersion killer, right there!
  • Ludonarrative dissonance; When the gameplay clashes with the premise/plot.
  • You’re a painter trying to finish your Magnum Opus, yet you go around in circles in your house doing anything but pick up a goddamn paint brush.
    • One might make the argument that’s because he’s using “something else” for his Magnum Opus…
  • But literally all you’re doing in the game is finding keys to open doors and combinations to padlocks and safes.
  • Wooo! Look at tall the dark imagery!
  • Bitch, I played through Amnesia: The Dark Descent twice over!
  • What really kills it for me is the over reliance on jump-scares.
    • Remember Outlast? Yeah, I hated that one too.

Total-CHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIR

 

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